


Unbroken

by Carmarthen



Category: The Eagle | Eagle of the Ninth (2011)
Genre: Anger, Canon Era, F/F, M/M, Past Sexual Assault, Slavery, Unresolved Sexual Tension, romans
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-10-12
Updated: 2011-10-12
Packaged: 2017-10-24 13:16:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,902
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/263899
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Carmarthen/pseuds/Carmarthen
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"None of his other masters could break him, but sometimes Esca thinks Marcus might, if he tried." <b>Warning:</b> Contains non-explicit reference to past rape, not involving Marcus.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Unbroken

**Author's Note:**

> For round three of the fanmedia challenge at ninth_eagle, inspired by the picture of the leash and collar. This is not the fun consensual bondage story I wanted to write. **Warning:** Contains non-explicit reference to past rape.
> 
> Thanks to Lishan and Piscaria for the beta; I didn't take all their advice, but they seriously improved this story. And thanks also to Sineala for the usual enablement and cheerleading.

Marcus Aquila is not a kind master.

He snarls and snaps at Esca like a wounded dog when Esca tends Marcus’s injured leg or steadies him from slipping in the baths. He grunts when Esca serves him at dinner, saying barely a word, and sits for hours staring out over the river in silence, his brow furrowed. Sometimes he takes off the bracelet he wears and turns it over and over in his hands, as if it holds some mystery he can unlock by staring at it.

Esca does not particularly resent it; indeed, he half-understands Marcus’s ill-humor and sullen temper. He knows what it is to have something taken away, something he thought he would always have. He knows what it is to be angry with all who cross his path because there is no single cause for his loss, no one to blame.

He prefers Marcus’s indifference. His last master, the one who sold him to the arena, had been kind. It was always, _Esca, if you would be so kind,_ and _If you please, Esca, would you,_ never a blunt order, always honeyed words. His gaze had rested on Esca’s skin like oil, greasy and thick, nearly impossible to wash off. He always thanked Esca for his service, as if Esca were a free man who gave it willingly. He tipped generously, his hand lingering over the coins in Esca’s palm.

Marcus never thanks Esca. Sometimes, when Esca changes the dressings on Marcus’s thigh, he glares like he wishes Esca would be struck down with fire from heaven. He is ungrateful and rude and churlish, and when he is not, he ignores Esca as if Esca is no more than an unneeded chair or couch.

Esca’s last master had been kind, until he bade Esca to come to his bed. He said it, as always, like a request, but it was not a request, and Esca was past caring what happened to him if he said no. He had knelt for enough Romans before, when he still thought he might live to escape; he had spread his legs for them and set his mind to other things, endured their hands on his body. No more.

He broke the man’s nose that time, struggling.

Sometimes when Marcus sends him into town on some errand Esca is afraid he will see his old master. He is afraid of himself.

* * *

Marcus has friends in town--or at least he calls them friends, although really they are just men he has exchanged words with the few times they have gone to the public baths, bureaucrats who find some thrill in being seen to be friends with a soldier. Marcus never speaks to other wounded soldiers, although there are some in Calleva near enough to his age--a young man with the light hair of a Gaul and only one hand, another wiry and dark with a bandage over one eye. He avoids their gaze in the streets, putting his head down as he passes.

One of the bureaucrats had invited Marcus to a party; Esca had heard Marcus turn down many such invitations, but this time his uncle was near enough to hear. “You ought to go, Marcus!” he said cheerfully. “It would do you good to leave the villa and spend some time with company besides your old uncle.”

Marcus frowned, reluctant, and old Aquila added with a sly grin, “Or I suppose you could stay and I could trounce you at latrunculi again.”

The bureaucrat laughed, like he thought there was a joke, but the sound died in his throat to an awkward silence. Marcus, to Esca’s surprise, gave his uncle a small but genuine smile and turned back to the bureaucrat, who was fussing with his toga. “Very well, Hilarius, I shall go.”

Which is how Esca has ended up here, at a rather tedious Roman party full of tedious Romans reciting their tedious poetry and eating peculiar foods. It is at least better than some of the other Roman parties he has been forced to endure over the years; not one drunk has grabbed his arse yet, and there are no dancing girls at all. It all seems very respectable.

The room falls quiet as a tall woman in a blue tunic stands up; her hair is dark, touched faintly with silver at the temples, and swept back from her high forehead in a simple style, for a Roman.

Beside Esca, someone sighs. “Is she not splendid?” comes a soft voice, and Esca turns to find a short, stocky woman some years older than him, with fluffy brown hair only half-tamed and a sweet face.

He looks at the woman in blue again. She is handsome enough, and there is dignity in the straightness of her back and the tilt of her chin, but he sees nothing there that poets would sing of, so he only nods politely as the woman begins to speak. While Esca speaks Latin well enough, he does not know all the tricks of phrase that make Romans prefer one poem to another. It is a love poem, and he has no interest in what Romans love.

The woman next to him is leaning forward, her lips parted and eyes shining, and Esca knows. The Romans would not notice--they do not think such a thing can happen between women--but Esca’s aunt had looked at her dearest friend so, and once when he was small Esca had caught them kissing, open-mouthed like lovers, with their hands tangled in each other’s bright hair.

“I am Maria Libanotis,” the woman says breathlessly, turning to Esca and smiling, “freedwoman to Maria Vulpecula.”

Something in Esca’s chest clenches, hard and painful, a sick feeling of horror in his stomach. “Esca, slave to Marcus Flavius Aquila,” he manages to scrape out with a dry tongue, the words tasting like ashes. For days after he was captured, all he could taste was ashes and the iron tang of blood in his mouth.

“Which one is he?” asks Libanotis, all friendly curiosity. She does not seem to think less of him for being a slave, but after all she is in love with her mistress. Esca does not think much of her judgement.

Esca points over to where Marcus stands, a wine-cup in one hand and an expression of polite interest fixed false on his features. Esca can tell by the way he cants his hip and puts more weight on one foot that his leg is paining him; he will be calling Esca to leave soon enough.

“Oh,” says Libanotis, “he does not look like much of a scholar. My Mar--my mistress likes to have scholars and philosophers and poets around her; I expect he would be more at home among soldiers, would he not?”

Esca thinks of how Marcus avoids those men in the street, how he seeks out men who are completely unlike him, who can never understand his life. “He is not much of a scholar, no.” And then, before he can stop himself, he asks, “Was she kind to you, when you were her slave?”

Libanotis stares at him wide-eyed for a moment. “Yes, of course. She always treated me as more of a friend then a slave.” Faint color stains her round cheeks. “I would not be so loyal, else.”

He swallows hard, trying to banish the lump in his throat. There is the danger, if Marcus is ever kind to him. He must remember that always, he thinks as he watches Marcus limp his way towards them through the crush of the party.

“Esca, fetch my cloak,” Marcus says, hardly sparing a glance for Libanotis, who drags one foot behind her as she goes to Maria Vulpecula, a smile already on her lips. Marcus’s face is subtly drawn with pain. Esca does not think anyone else can see it, but he has seen Marcus in every shade and form of pain these last months, and he knows the signs. Another man would show it more, might not even still be standing, but Marcus Aquila is iron at his core.

None of his other masters could break him, but sometimes Esca thinks Marcus might, if he tried.

* * *

After the surgeon came and set his knives to Marcus’s leg a second time, after Marcus’s fever broke and he awoke clear-eyed, he takes the water Esca offers him, their hands touching for a moment. It is the first time Marcus has touched Esca, although Esca has touched him many times before. Marcus’s hands are warm, still rough from soldier’s training.

“Thank you,” he says with a shy, very nearly sweet smile that Esca has never seen before, a smile Esca refuses to like. Their eyes meet, and for an instant Esca almost thinks it is as man to man and not master to slave.

Esca stiffens, but Marcus is draining the cup all at once, throat working. After, he holds the cup out to Esca. “More,” he says, leaning back against the pillow and closing his eyes. Esca relaxes.

A month later, when the apple trees in the orchard bear bright new leaves, Marcus casually drops a few coins in Esca’s lap in passing. “Take tomorrow off,” he says, almost cheerfully, as he limps away, leaning on a stick. “Buy yourself a girl, or a drink.”

He hadn’t touched Esca at all, but neither had Esca’s last master, at first.

Esca picks up the coins and stares at them for a moment, shining in his palm. It’s enough for one of the nicer prostitutes, or a great deal of beer, but he doesn’t want a girl or a drink. He wants the old Marcus Aquila back, the one who had not even liked to look at him.

* * *

There were two ways to tame an animal to the leash or yoke or saddle: with the whip and with kindness.

There were two ways to break a slave: with the whip and with kindness.

Esca's back is a map of scars.

He was wrong, terribly wrong, to think that Marcus was different, that Marcus was _safe_ because he was curt and unfriendly and ignored Esca when he did not require his services.

The river water sluices off him, bitter cold, and his chilled skin tingles all over where the sun strikes it, a pleasure so deep it is almost erotic, but his heart is suddenly pounding with another emotion entirely, the blood roaring in his ears. Marcus’s dark eyes are fixed on him, a flush rising in his cheeks, and he stands on the bank where he had ducked out of the brush as if he cannot move. He stands and stares, and his gaze is a weight on Esca’s skin, almost like the touch of a hand, and something in Esca welcomes it, even as he wants to run and never stop.

Esca knows that look and he clenches his fists, making himself step out of the river with his head held high. He pulls his tunic over his head, tugging hard when it catches on still-wet skin, pretending he does not know what Marcus is surely thinking. When he looks again Marcus is gone.

He is no hound to be collared by a Roman, no matter how kind Marcus becomes. He will not forget that, no matter what happens between them. He will not be broken.

**Author's Note:**

> Neither Vulpecula nor Libanotis is a documented cognomen, just my little sneaky reference to Mary Renault and Rosemary Sutcliff, mistresses of the textually gay and remarkably homoromantic historical fiction respectively (they were not dating in real life). (Hilarius, however, is an attested cognomen.)
> 
> I am not sure how plausible this kind of mixed-sex literary party is. Primary sources are rather silent in general about women.


End file.
